and Aunt Keziah, and my mother and grandmother, all in ecstasies of
creative inspiration, ran, bustled, and hurried--mixing, rolling,
tasting, consulting--alternately setting us children to work when
anything could be made of us, and then chasing us all out of the
kitchen when our misinformed childhood ventured to take too many
liberties with sacred mysteries. Then out we would all fly at the
kitchen door, like sparks from a blacksmith's window.
On these occasions, as there was a great looseness in the police
department over us children, we usually found a ready refuge at Miss
Mehitable's with Tina,[8] who, confident of the strength of her
position with Polly, invited us into the kitchen, and with the air of
a mistress led us around to view the proceedings there.
[Footnote 8: Tina was Miss Mehitable's adopted child; Polly her
faithful old maid-servant.]
A genius for entertaining was one of Tina's principal characteristics;
and she did not fail to make free with raisins, or citrons, or
whatever came to hand, in a spirit of hospitality at which Polly
seriously demurred. That worthy woman occasionally felt the
inconvenience of the state of subjugation to which the little elf had
somehow or other reduced her, and sometimes rattled her chains
fiercely, scolding with a vigour which rather alarmed us, but which
Tina minded not a whit. Confident of her own powers, she would, in the
very midst of her wrath, mimic her to her face with such irresistible
drollery as to cause the torrent of reproof to end in a dissonant
laugh, accompanied by a submissive cry for quarter.
"I declare, Tina Percival," she said to her one day, "you're saucy
enough to physic a horn bug! I never did see the beater of you! If
Miss Mehitable don't keep you in better order, I don't see what's to
become of any of us!"
"Why, what did 'come of you before I came?" was the undismayed reply.
"You know, Polly, you and Aunty both were just as lonesome as you
could be till I came here, and you never had such pleasant times in
your life as you've had since I've been here. You're a couple of old
beauties, both of you, and know just how to get along with me. But
come, boys, let's take our raisins and go up into the garret and play
Thanksgiving."
In the corner of the great kitchen, during all these days, the jolly
old oven roared and crackled in great volcanic billows of flame,
snapping and gurgling as if the old fellow entered with joyful
sympathy into the frolic of the hour; and then, his great heart being
once warmed up, he brooded over successive generations of pies and
cakes, which went in raw and came out cooked, till butteries and
dressers and shelves and pantries were literally crowded with a
jostling abundance.
A great cold northern chamber, where the sun never shone, and where in
winter the snow sifted in at the window cracks, and ice and frost
reigned with undisputed sway, was fitted up to be the storehouse of
these surplus treasures. There, frozen solid, and thus well preserved
in their icy fetters, they formed a great repository for all the
winter months; and the pies baked at Thanksgiving often came out fresh
and good with the violets of April.
During this eventful preparation week all the female part of my
grandmother's household, as I have before remarked, were at a height
above any ordinary state of mind; they moved about the house rapt in a
species of prophetic frenzy. It seemed to be considered a necessary
feature of such festivals that everybody should be in a hurry, and
everything in the house should be turned bottom upwards with
enthusiasm--so at least we children understood it, and we certainly
did our part to keep the ball rolling.
At this period the constitutional activity of Uncle Fliakim increased
to a degree that might fairly be called preternatural. Thanksgiving
time was the time for errands of mercy and beneficence through the
country; and Uncle Fliakim's immortal old rubber horse and rattling
wagon were on the full jump in tours of investigation into everybody's
affairs in the region around. On returning, he would fly through our
kitchen like the wind, leaving open the doors, upsetting whatever came
in his way--now a pan of milk, and now a basin of mince--talking
rapidly, and forgetting only the point in every case that gave it
significance, or enabled any one to put it to any sort of use. When
Aunt Lois checked his benevolent effusions by putting the test
questions of practical efficiency, Uncle Fliakim always remembered
that he'd "forgotten to inquire about that," and skipping through the
kitchen, and springing into his old wagon, would rattle off again on a
full tilt to correct and amend his investigations.
Moreover, my grandmother's kitchen at this time began to be haunted by
those occasional hangers-on and retainers, of uncertain fortunes, whom
a full experience of her bountiful habits led to expect something at
her hand at this time of the year. All the poor, loafing tribes,
Indian and half-Indian, who at other times wandered, selling baskets
and other light wares, were sure to come back to Oldtown a little
before Thanksgiving time, and report themselves in my grandmother's
kitchen.
The great hogshead of cider in the cellar, which my grandfather called
the Indian hogshead, was on tap at all hours of the day; and many a
mugful did I draw and dispense to the tribes that basked in the
sunshine at our door.
Aunt Lois never had a hearty conviction of the propriety of these
arrangements; but my grandmother, who had a prodigious verbal memory,
bore down upon her with such strings of quotations from the Old
Testament that she was utterly routed.
"Now," says my Aunt Lois, "I s'pose we've got to have Betty Poganut
and Sally Wonsamug, and old Obscue and his wife, and the whole tribe
down, roosting around our doors till we give 'em something. That's
just mother's way; she always keeps a whole generation at her heels."
"How many times must I tell you, Lois, to read your Bible?" was my
grandmother's rejoinder; and loud over the sound of pounding and
chopping in the kitchen could be heard the voice of her quotations:
"If there be among you a poor man in any of the gates of the land
which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thy heart,
nor shut thy hand, from thy poor brother. Thou shalt surely give him;
and thy heart shall not be grieved when thou givest to him, because
that for this thing the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all thy
works; for the poor shall never cease from out of the land."
These words seemed to resound like a sort of heraldic proclamation to
call around us all that softly shiftless class, who, for some reason
or other, are never to be found with anything in hand at the moment
that it is wanted.
"There, to be sure," said Aunt Lois, one day when our preparations
were in full blast; "there comes Sam Lawson down the hill, limpsy as
ever; now he'll have his doleful story to tell, and mother'll give him
one of the turkeys."
And so, of course, it fell out.
Sam came in with his usual air of plaintive assurance, and seated
himself a contemplative spectator in the chimney corner, regardless of
the looks and signs of unwelcome on the part of Aunt Lois.
"Lordy massy, how prosperous everything does seem here!" he said in
musing tones, over his inevitable mug of cider; "so different from
what 'tis t' our house. There's Hepsey, she's all in a stew, an' I've
just been an' got her thirty-seven cents' wuth o' nutmegs, yet she
says she's sure she don't see how she's to keep Thanksgiving, an'
she's down on me about it, just as ef 'twas my fault. Yeh see, last
winter our old gobbler got froze. You know, Mis' Badger, that 'ere
cold night we hed last winter. Wal, I was off with Jake Marshall that
night; ye see, Jake, he had to take old General Dearborn's corpse into
Boston, to the family vault, and Jake, he kind o' hated to go alone;
'twas a drefful cold time, and he ses to me,' Sam, you jes' go 'long
with me'; so I was sort o' sorry for him, and I kind o' thought I'd
go 'long. Wal, come 'long to Josh Bissel's tahvern, there at the
Halfway House, you know, 'twas so swingeing cold we stopped to take a
little suthin' warmin', an' we sort o' sot an' sot over the fire,
till, fust we knew, we kind o' got asleep; an' when we woke up we
found we'd left the old General hitched up t' th' post pretty much all
night. Wal, didn't hurt him none, poor man; 'twas allers a favourite
spot o' his'n. But, takin' one thing with another, I didn't get home
till about noon next day, an' I tell you, Hepsey she was right down on
me. She said the baby was sick, and there hadn't been no wood split,
nor the barn fastened up, nor nuthin'. Lordy massy, I didn't mean no
harm; I thought there was wood enough, and I thought likely Hepsey'd
git out an' fasten up the barn. But Hepsey, she was in one o' her
contrary streaks, an' she wouldn't do a thing; an' when I went out to
look, why, sure 'nuff, there was our old tom-turkey froze as stiff as
a stake--his claws jist a stickin' right straight up like this." Here
Sam struck an expressive attitude, and looked so much like a frozen
turkey as to give a pathetic reality to the picture.
"Well, now, Sam, why need you be off on things that's none of your
business?" said my grandmother. "I've talked to you plainly about that
a great many times, Sam," she continued, in tones of severe
admonition. "Hepsey is a hard-working woman, but she can't be expected
to see to everything, and you oughter 'ave been at home that night to
fasten up your own barn and look after your own creeturs."
Sam took the rebuke all the more meekly as he perceived the stiff
black legs of a turkey poking out from under my grandmother's apron
while she was delivering it. To be exhorted and told of his
shortcomings, and then furnished with a turkey at Thanksgiving, was a
yearly part of his family program. In time he departed, not only with
the turkey, but with us boys in procession after him, bearing a mince
and a pumpkin pie for Hepsey's children.
"Poor things!" my grandmother remarked; "they ought to have something
good to eat Thanksgiving Day; 'tain't their fault that they've got a
shiftless father."
Sam, in his turn, moralized to us children, as we walked beside him:
"A body'd think that Hepsey'd learn to trust in Providence," he said,
"but she don't. She allers has a Thanksgiving dinner pervided; but
that 'ere woman ain't grateful for it, by no manner o' means. Now
she'll be jest as cross as she can be, 'cause this 'ere ain't _our_
turkey, and these 'ere ain't our pies. Folks doos lose so much that
hes sech dispositions."
A multitude of similar dispensations during the course of the week
materially reduced the great pile of chickens and turkeys which black
Cæsar's efforts in slaughtering, picking, and dressing kept daily
supplied....
* * * * *
Great as the preparations were for the dinner, everything was so
contrived that not a soul in the house should be kept from the
morning service of Thanksgiving in the church, and from listening to
the Thanksgiving sermon, in which the minister was expected to express
his views freely concerning the politics of the country and the state
of things in society generally, in a somewhat more secular vein of
thought than was deemed exactly appropriate to the Lord's day. But it
is to be confessed that, when the good man got carried away by the
enthusiasm of his subject to extend these exercises beyond a certain
length, anxious glances, exchanged between good wives, sometimes
indicated a weakness of the flesh, having a tender reference to the
turkeys and chickens and chicken pies which might possibly be
overdoing in the ovens at home. But your old brick oven was a true
Puritan institution, and backed up the devotional habits of good
housewives by the capital care which he took of whatever was committed
to his capacious bosom. A truly well-bred oven would have been ashamed
of himself all his days and blushed redder than his own fires, if a
God-fearing house matron, away at the temple of the Lord, should come
home and find her pie crust either burned or underdone by his over or
under zeal; so the old fellow generally managed to bring things out
exactly right.
When sermons and prayers were all over, we children rushed home to see
the great feast of the year spread.
What chitterings and chatterings there were all over the house, as all
the aunties and uncles and cousins came pouring in, taking off their
things, looking at one another's bonnets and dresses, and mingling
their comments on the morning sermon with various opinions on the new
millinery outfits, and with bits of home news and kindly neighbourhood
gossip.
Uncle Bill, whom the Cambridge college authorities released, as they
did all the other youngsters of the land, for Thanksgiving Day, made a
breezy stir among them all, especially with the young cousins of the
feminine gender.
The best room on this occasion was thrown wide open, and its habitual
coldness had been warmed by the burning down of a great stack of
hickory logs, which had been heaped up unsparingly since morning. It
takes some hours to get a room warm where a family never sits, and
which therefore has not in its walls one particle of the genial
vitality which comes from the indwelling of human beings. But on
Thanksgiving Day, at least, every year this marvel was effected in our
best room.
Although all servile labour and vain recreation on this day were by
law forbidden, according to the terms of the proclamation, it was not
held to be a violation of the precept that all the nice old aunties
should bring their knitting work and sit gently trotting their needles
around the fire; nor that Uncle Bill should start a full-fledged romp
among the girls and children, while the dinner was being set on the
long table in the neighbouring kitchen. Certain of the good elderly
female relatives, of serious and discreet demeanour, assisted at this
operation.
But who shall do justice to the dinner, and describe the turkey, and
chickens, and chicken pies, with all that endless variety of
vegetables which the American soil and climate have contributed to the
table, and which, without regard to the French doctrine of courses,
were all piled together in jovial abundance upon the smoking board?
There was much carving and laughing and talking and eating, and all
showed that cheerful ability to despatch the provisions which was the
ruling spirit of the hour. After the meat came the plum puddings, and
then the endless array of pies, till human nature was actually
bewildered and overpowered by the tempting variety; and even we
children turned from the profusion offered to us, and wondered what
was the matter that we could eat no more.
When all was over, my grandfather rose at the head of the table, and a
fine venerable picture he made as he stood there, his silver hair
flowing in curls down each side of his clear, calm face, while, in
conformity to the old Puritan custom, he called their attention to a
recital of the mercies of God in His dealings with their family.
It was a sort of family history, going over and touching upon the
various events which had happened. He spoke of my father's death, and
gave a tribute to his memory; and closed all with the application of a
time-honoured text, expressing the hope that as years passed by we
might "so number our days as to apply our hearts unto wisdom"; and
then he gave out that psalm which in those days might be called the
national hymn of the Puritans.
"Let children hear the mighty deeds
Which God performed of old,
Which in our younger years we saw,
And which our fathers told.
"He bids us make his glories known,
His works of power and grace.
And we'll convey his wonders down
Through every rising race.
"Our lips shall tell them to our sons,
And they again to theirs;
That generations yet unborn
May teach them to their heirs.
"Thus shall they learn in God alone
Their hope securely stands;
That they may ne'er forget his works,
But practise his commands."
This we all united in singing to the venerable tune of St. Martin's,
an air which, the reader will perceive, by its multiplicity of quavers
and inflections gave the greatest possible scope to the cracked and
trembling voices of the ancients, who united in it with even more zeal
than the younger part of the community.
Uncle Fliakim Sheril, furbished up in a new crisp black suit, and with
his spindleshanks trimly incased in the smoothest of black silk
stockings, looking for all the world just like an alert and spirited
black cricket, outdid himself on this occasion in singing _counter_,
in that high, weird voice that he must have learned from the wintry
winds that usually piped around the corners of the old house. But any
one who looked at him, as he sat with his eyes closed, beating time
with head and hand, and, in short, with every limb of his body, must
have perceived the exquisite satisfaction which he derived from this
mode of expressing himself. I much regret to be obliged to state that
my graceless Uncle Bill, taking advantage of the fact that the eyes of
all his elders were devotionally closed, stationing himself a little
in the rear of my Uncle Fliakim, performed an exact imitation of his
_counter_ with such a killing facility that all the younger part of
the audience were nearly dead with suppressed laughter. Aunt Lois, who
never shut her eyes a moment on any occasion, discerned this from a
distant part of the room, and in vain endeavoured to stop it by
vigorously shaking her head at the offender. She might as well have
shaken it at a bobolink tilting on a clover top. In fact, Uncle Bill
was Aunt Lois's weak point, and the corners of her own mouth were
observed to twitch in such a suspicious manner that the whole moral
force of her admonition was destroyed.
And now, the dinner being cleared away, we youngsters, already excited
to a tumult of laughter, tumbled into the best room, under the
supervision of Uncle Bill, to relieve ourselves with a game of
"blindman's bluff," while the elderly women washed up the dishes and
got the house in order, and the men folks went out to the barn to look
at the cattle, and walked over the farm and talked of the crops.
In the evening the house was all open and lighted with the best of
tallow candles, which Aunt Lois herself had made with especial care
for this illumination. It was understood that we were to have a dance,
and black Cæsar, full of turkey and pumpkin pie, and giggling in the
very jollity of his heart, had that afternoon rosined his bow, and
tuned his fiddle, and practised jigs and Virginia reels, in a way that
made us children think him a perfect Orpheus....
You may imagine the astounding wassail among the young people.... My
Uncle Bill related the story of "the Wry-mouth Family," with such
twists and contortions and killing extremes of the ludicrous as
perfectly overcame even the minister; and he was to be seen, at one
period of the evening, with a face purple with laughter and the tears
actually rolling down over his well-formed cheeks, while some of the
more excitable young people almost fell in trances and rolled on the
floor in the extreme of their merriment. In fact, the assemblage was
becoming so tumultuous, that the scrape of Cæsar's violin and the
forming of sets for a dance seemed necessary to restore the peace....
Uncle Bill would insist on leading out Aunt Lois, and the bright
colour rising to her thin cheeks brought back a fluttering image of
what might have been beauty in some fresh, early day. Ellery Davenport
insisted upon leading forth Miss Deborah Kittery, notwithstanding her
oft-repeated refusals and earnest protestations to the contrary. As to
Uncle Fliakim, he jumped and frisked and gyrated among the single
sisters and maiden aunts, whirling them into the dance as if he had
been the little black gentleman himself. With that true spirit of
Christian charity which marked all his actions, he invariably chose
out the homeliest and most neglected, and thus worthy Aunt Keziah,
dear old soul, was for a time made quite prominent by his
attentions....
Grandmother's face was radiant with satisfaction, as the wave of
joyousness crept up higher and higher round her, till the elders, who
stood keeping time with their heads and feet, began to tell one
another how they had danced with their sweethearts in good old days
gone by, and the elder women began to blush and bridle, and boast of
steps that they could take in their youth, till the music finally
subdued them, and into the dance they went.
"Well, well!" quoth my grandmother; "they're all at it so hearty I
don't see why I shouldn't try it myself." And into the Virginia reel
she went, amid screams of laughter from all the younger members of the
company.
But I assure you my grandmother was not a woman to be laughed at; for
whatever she once set on foot she "put through" with a sturdy energy
befitting a daughter of the Puritans.
"Why shouldn't I dance?" she said, when she arrived red and
resplendent at the bottom of the set. "Didn't Mr. Despondency and Miss
Muchafraid and Mr. Readytohalt all dance together in the 'Pilgrim's
Progress?'" And the minister in his ample flowing wig, and my lady in
her stiff brocade, gave to my grandmother a solemn twinkle of
approbation.
As nine o'clock struck, the whole scene dissolved and melted; for what
well-regulated village would think of carrying festivities beyond that
hour?
And so ended our Thanksgiving at Oldtown.
WISHBONE VALLEY[9]
BY R. K. MUNKITTRICK.
A Thanksgiving ghost story about a boy who dined not wisely
but too well.
The Thanksgiving feast had just ended, and only Donald and his little
sister Grace remained at the table, looking drowsily at the
plum-pudding that they couldn't finish, but which they disliked to
leave on their plates.
[Footnote 9: From _Harper's Young People_, November 21, 1893.]
When the plates had been removed, and the plum-pudding taken to the
kitchen and placed beside the well-carved gobbler, Donald and Grace
were too tired to rise from their chairs to have their faces washed.
They seemed lost in a roseate repose, until Grace finally thought of
the wishbone that they intended to break after dinner.
"Come, now, Donald," she said, "let's break the old gobbler's
wishbone."
"All right," replied Donald, opening his eyes slowly, and unwrapping
the draperies of his sweet plum-pudding dreams from about him, "let's
do it now." So he held up the wishbone, and Grace took hold of the
other end of it with a merry laugh.
"Here, you must not take hold so far from the end, because I have a
fine wish to make, and want to get the big half if possible."
"So have I a nice wish to make," replied Grace, with a sigh, "and I
also want the big end."
And so they argued for a few minutes, until their mother entered the
room and told them that if they could not stop quarrelling over the
wishbone she would take it from them and throw it into the fire. So
they lost no time in taking it by the ends and snapping it asunder.
"Hurrah!" exclaimed Donald, observing Grace's expression of
disappointment. "I've got it!"
"Well, I've made a wish, too," said Grace.
"But it won't come true," replied Donald, "because you have the little
end."
And then Donald thought he would go out in the air and play, because
his great dinner made him feel very uncomfortable. When he was out in
the barnyard it was just growing dusk, and Donald, through his
half-closed eyes, observed a gobbler strutting about. To his great
surprise the gobbler approached him instead of running away.
"I thought we had you for dinner to-day," said Donald.
"You did," replied the gobbler coldly, "and you had a fine old time,
didn't you?"
"Yes," said Donald, "you made a splendid dinner, and you ought to be
pleased to think you made us all so happy. Your second joints were
very sweet and juicy, and your drumsticks were like sticks of candy."
"And you broke my poor old wishbone with your little sister, didn't
you?"
"I did."
"And what did you wish?" asked the gobbler.
"You mustn't ask me that," replied Donald, "because, you know, if I
tell you the wish I made it would not come true."
"But it was my wishbone," persisted the gobbler, "and I think I ought
to know something about it."
"You have rights, I suppose, and your argument is not without force,"
replied Donald, with calm dignity.
The gobbler was puzzled at so lofty a reply, and not understanding it,
said:
"I am only the ghost, or spirit, of the gobbler you ate to-day, but
still I remember how one day last summer you threw a pan of water on
me, and alluded to my wattles as a red necktie, and called me 'Old
Harvard,' Now, come along!"
"Where?" asked Donald.
"To Wishbone Valley, where you will see the spirits of my ancestors
eaten by your family."